I saw that twice that day, and it's starting to make sense. The salmon carcasses sink to the bottom of the river. The gulls cannot dive very deep. So when someone comes up with a tasty chunk, everyone wants it. This explains the commotion when the sea lions were surfacing with a fish.

This doesn't explain why the gulls don't get nearly as excited about the pieces of fish that are on the riverbank. Maybe the ones at the bottom are fresher? But the gulls seem to be oddly selective about who they steal food from at other times too.

Oh, how I wish this next series of photos was clearer. I'll post them anyway.Have a good look at this juvenile.BIIIIG crop!But also...Look at those ragged feather tips. On some of the pictures, you can see that the ragged pattern is very consistent from feather to feather. I'm wondering if this is what Twentylet might look like now!Click Here to see photos of Twentylet shortly after he fledged. There was an eaglet named Tova in Campbell River two summers ago who had a more pronounced version of the same problem, so I tend to think of it as the Tova syndrome.

If you click on the pictures, you'll see that some of the secondaries still have their threadlike tassels despite the damage!

We left the seashore & stopped at this area which was all fenced off to protect the area for birds.There were PILES of birds there, & we could hear Eagles in the distance.This spot was right beside the road, & you can see there are many Mallard drakes & ducks & a Great Blue Heron.The yellow arrows mark the Salmon carcasses in the foto.There were many of these too.LOTS of action at this spot.Too bad we couldn*t get closer.The area is right in a residential neighbourhood.

Just down the street from the bird sanctuary, wren spotted this good looking youngster in a tree in someone*s yard.i tiptoed my camera closer & closer til wren dragged me away, saying we needed to go back to the wilds & out of the neighbourhood.

It's wonderful to see the sea lions and birds through your eyes, Booni and Wren! A group of sea otters floating together is called a "raft." I wonder what a group of sea lions floating like that is called?

Sea otters keep their flippers in the air when they're floating, because the flippers don't have fur on them for insulation. Is that the same for sea lions? Inquiring minds want to know...

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"When one tugs at a single thing in nature; he finds it attached to the rest of the world". ~John Muir

This looks to me like an Eagle who hatched three years ago this coming spring.Look at the golden coloured cap, the lighter brown almost golden brown eyes, the dark neck feathers that end suddenly at a line on the breast, the much lighter beak.This youngster looks a lot like Schmee/Semee/Semi, the young Eagle who was brought into MARS after connecting with the windshield of a semi truck.Read about her on the MARS thread!